Impact of religiosity and supernatural belief on individuals’ visitation to religious healers

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of religiosity and supernatural beliefs on people's visitation to religious healers among the Muslim population using Pew World Muslim Dataset 2012 (N = 31,354). The result of multilevel level logistic regression reveals that religious Muslims are more likely to visit religious healers than non-religious Muslims. Individuals who believe in the supernatural (i.e., evil eye, witchcraft) and that making offerings to them is acceptable in Islam are more likely to visit religious healers than others. Also, a moderation effect indicates these same people are more likely to visit religious healers than religious individuals who do not believe in such supernatural forces. Individuals from lower economic strata and rural areas, females, and non-educated people are more likely to visit religious healers than others. This is the first quantitative study on determinants of people's visitation to religious healers. Limitations and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Religiosity
• religious healers
• supernatural belief
• public health
• Islam
• quantitative analysis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my dear friends Maliha Noshin and Minhazur Rahman for their kind help. Also, I would like to thank the journal editors and peer-reviewers for giving their valuable advice in preparing this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.